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The Canadian team behind Minuum say their software recovers more than half the usable touchscreen space taken up by traditional touchscreen keyboards.

Further, they say their special
algorithm allows for faster test entry, even when your typing is sloppy,
while still providing easy access to special keys like numbers,
punctuation and backspace.

Innovative design: Minuum earned its name from the way its keys are laid out in a row in what the developers call a 'continuum of letters'

And if that was not enough the app is so flexible the keyboard can even be moved around the screen allowing users to leave visible the bits of the display they are working on.

'Your typing on mobile devices is inherently imprecise—and there’s nothing wrong with that. We work with that.' say the developers on their Indiegogo page.

'By reducing the keyboard to a single dimension, Minuum opens up your touchscreen space for a variety of interaction possibilities — which allows for precision-entry.'

Minuum earned its name from the way its keys are laid out in a row in what the developers call a 'continuum of letters'.

'We call it 'one-dimensional' because it’s based on one row of keys,' they say.

'This frees up the keyboard to be anywhere you like on the screen, or even to curve for a more ergonomic keyboard shape.'

The idea was inspired by a research project undertaken by some of the developers while studying at the University of Toronto which asked them to invent a better way of typing on touchscreen phones without looking.

From this project, they came up with the app's novel alphabet layout and the disambiguation algorithm needed to ensure that it understood what users were trying to type in.

But de-cluttering your touchscreen is only the short-term ambition of the Minuum team.

They envisage its revolutionary design being adapted to a range of surfaces.

You needn't even have to use your fingers since any motion in one-dimension can be used to input information via Minuum.

Possibilities for the future: De-cluttering your touchscreen is only the short-term ambition of the Minuum team. They envisage its revolutionary design being adapted to a range of surfaces

That means that users with an accelerometer equipped game controller, like those on Nintendo's Wii console could swing it from side to side to input words; and users wearing head-mounted computers like Google Glass could even write by pivoting their heads from side to side.

'With only one dimension to measure, these kinds of typing systems are easy to make—and easy to use, even in noisy and constrained sensing environments,' the Minuum team say.

The app is currently in development for Android, since Apple's iOS does not allow users to replace the operating system's built-in keyboard.

The Minuum team say they will use their first $10,000 to turn their prototype software into a fully-fledged Android app ready to be distributed via Google's Play store.